


Evolution

by completetheory



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Character Study, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23376250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completetheory/pseuds/completetheory
Summary: A brief psychological profile of the first, chaotic child of the Cosmic Order.
Relationships: Hastur/Nyarlathotep (Cthulhu Mythos)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Evolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadScientific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadScientific/gifts).



It was Nyarlathotep who first rolled the dice, and shuffled the deck, and dealt the cards. It was Nyarlathotep who mapped the trajectory of the scattering spots and strips across the green, breaking the rack with mathematical precision. 

Nyarlathotep wedded statistics to randomness, forging polar opposites that met, embraced, and had hybrid children beyond observation, shifting and changing. He plucked the harp of string theory, kenning the symphony. It was Azathoth who dreamed, and it was Nyarlathotep who danced, and reached a hundred arms to the cosmos in search of partners. 

None of the Bringer of Strange Joy's dice were weighted, but the rules were somewhat oblique for entities raised in the third dimension. Time and space were - while ultimate laws - mere suggestions, and every single atom of the spread was a tool.

Dance with me. Rejoice with me. Worship by my side this land of plenty, explore it, tame it, be destroyed by it, and come again. 

The First Arrival split himself into a hundred thousand forms, the better to drink each experience with wings, with cloven hooves, with tentacles, with teeth. 

He took up the crown of the genome, urging each ebb and flow of species across every planet he discovered. Where there were fins, he rejoiced as they crawled to land, and gave equal joy as the species of the dry places were driven back to their ancestral home in the sea.

Change drove him, and everywhere he found the desire to crystallize, he shattered the matrices with triumph. The small gods who came after looked to him as protector, because a god enslaved to dogma can ill survive the eroding tides of worship long. Flexibility was key to the survival of all creatures, great and small, even those who lived solely in the mind, and hailed of the Dreamlands. The true test of freedom was the ability to be Other, and to be Other again, and continue to bend as storm-battered reeds, as the nebulae of dust in space drifted ever over milennia, nothing bound, nothing permanent, nothing forever. 

The sweet release of crumbling ruins and monuments, the impermanence of all things, the creeping forward or lunging suddenly of an avalanche, carving up and down forever in one unending waltz that sang solely of alteration. 

Statues shedding superfluous atoms and anatomy, the soul shedding the flesh, Azathoth's little thoughts returning home to rest, and to be sent out again. 

The little ones told their tales, and often in their discomfort was he cast as Satan, but rarely they knew him also as Prometheus, and as Pandora, the same creature who would be burned for firelight as would release all the terrors onto the world in exchange for hope of better. In some lands they knew him as the Dame of Fortune, capricious, veiled, and offering all the many gifts and pitfalls of life. 

He adored all these titles without discrimination, embracing the Fallen Lucifer story as one of individual choice and the disruption of an oppressive, antiquated system, and every time he saw himself incarnated thus villainous, he stopped to admire the reflection with a curving smile. 

Like most creatures, he thrived on the love funneled from similar facets of the universe, and settled beside, and within, those who knew him best. His 'pantheon' was often fractuous, but he found consistent fellowship with the Yellow King, blending the red of his sunset with that warm gold, and felt his restless nature still. This, too, was creation, and change; a true love that moved with the object of its affection, forever shifting to match the new projections, and be matched in return. 

'I will know you', was the eternal promise, and the exploration was the enacting of their mutual, fierce affection, on the physical plane and beyond. 

He coiled within that resting place, and who can say what the gods dream?


End file.
